21/05/2012

Today is Dvorak day, on this day in 1932, Dr. August Dvorak made his application for the patent of the simplified keyboard layout.
I switched over to the Dvorak layoutjust under a year ago now, I’d like say that everything has turned out for the best & I’m now an amazing touch typist but infact, in order to get back up to speed of typing at the same rate as on a qwerty keyboard, I’ve subconsciously started skipping typing words. This, combined with autocorrect on Mac OS & iOS turned out to be a bit of a disaster.
On the flip side it helps reduce the likelihood of suffering from RSI & its much more comfortable to type with.
There is a comic called DVzine for introducing new people to the Dvorak layout which I was pointed to an twitter.
I picked a weekend to switch over so that there wouldn’t be any work pressure, stuck a printout of the Dvorak layout next to my monitor for reference & by the Monday I was familiar enough that I wasn’t looking at the printout for the location of each key. I rapidly realised at that point that I remembered most of my passwords through muscle memory & struggled the first few weeks as I adjusted.
I’m now at the same level as I was before and now focusing on fixing my bad typing habits. I’m glad to have made the switch.